EA Responds To 'Spore' DRM Concerns

EA has been fighting some internet backlash over Spore's DRM issues, but they have responded with hard numbers. The outrage comes from EA's limit of three activations before having to call customer service for a shot at some additional activations.

This has even led to Amazon.com's review page for Spore being overrun by 1-star reviews from outraged consumers. These reviews were briefly taken down, but have now reappeared.

Using data from their previous games and the Spore Creature Creator, EA cites figures that put the number of users that have requested more than 3 activations at 1% of the 453,048 total Creature Creator customers. Furthermore, only 25% of their entire customer base even installs EA games on more than one PC.

"You can install the game on three computers – at your office, at home or for your family. What you can’t do is make and distribute a thousand copies online," said an EA Maxis representative.

This is only really becoming an issue because Spore, while it supports sharing content between users over the web, is a singleplayer game. Gamers usually accept strict DRM when it comes to accessing multiplayer content, but get bent out of shape when they are forced to authenticate online for an offline title.

As EA states, however, this is a one-time activation per computer. Once activated, you do not need to be connected to the internet to run the game.

"EA has not changed our basic DRM copy protection system," said an EA representative. "We simply changed the copy protection method from using the physical media, which requires authentication every time you play the game by requiring a disc in the drive, to one which uses a one-time online authentication."